Freddy on Tape

We started reading another Freddy book recently. (Reading aloud good children's literature is one of my best defenses against depression. When the kids are all grown up, I think I'm going to have to volunteer in the schools, just so I can find somebody to read to!) Maggie wanted more Freddy than my feeble voice can provide, so she got an audio book and is eating it up.

It just crossed my mind. One of the manifestations of her vcfs is central auditory processing problems. She doesn't quite hear correctly. It's almost like she hears things backwards sometimes, and gets very easily confused with words like they're puzzle pieces strewn around. In fact, listening to books read aloud, or interpreting oral instructions, is supposed to be rather difficult for vcfs kids. And yet, Maggie LOVES listening to audio books over and over and over. She's going to completely wear out some Harry Potter audio books. In spite of the CAPD, she loves listening to the books. It's certainly easier for her than reading them to herself (something that she can do but doesn't enjoy very much, but which the "experts" said she'd never do).

The airwaves in this house are near-constantly filled with the sounds of Jim Dale reading about Harry and Ron and Hermione, or the sounds of Stockard Channing reading about Ramona and Beezus. It's nice to branch out to another series (although the reader of Freddy is not phenomenal as are the two previously mentioned readers). But for the mother of a vcfs kid, there's something to be pondered here about what's being learned from all this repetition of audio books, and what it might be a sign of.

Oh, by the way, if you have kids and you haven't discovered Walter Brooks's Freddy books, you need to find out about them. I'd never heard of them until Katie spent the summer at the Scotts' home, and they informed us of a Not-To-Be-Missed series. Freddy is definitely some of the best children's fiction available!